Predictions for OC/FT Live Letter

[Jeeqbit]

Incidentally, I have been a member of Discords related to this game in the past. IME it is the minority that create a friendly environment in which the key personnel are motivated by a love of the game and a desire to help. The majority are spiteful fiefdoms run by manipulative individuals, while others promote in-game cheating and ToS violations.

But maybe I've just been unlucky.

There are certainly servers with a lot of internal drama, largely brought about by passion for the subject or interpersonal disputes, but in my own experience this is rare ie. a drama comes about every few years, maybe gets overblown in public when it wasn't actually that bad.

Really like any company, organization, council or government, Discords can be mismanaged. Even when they are managed well, they are managed by humans who are not perfect and have to try to balance conflicting personalities and social dynamics. That's just life generally.

What really matters is: do they let all of that spill over and affect their users? Some of them might, but I think the good ones will keep the drama and bickering to themselves if it happens.

[FuturePastNow]

You arent owed anything, you can do your own research into the "discord cartels" lmao

God forbid people have to be social in an MMORPG.

The discords that run this large-scale content aren't a social experience, though. You go to their queue channel, throw your name in a hat along with a zillion other people trying to join, and if you're lucky enough to be chosen you mute your mic and listen to calls. I don't dispute the effectiveness of running it that way, but social is not the word I'd use for it.

[Kozh]

Of course I never join this sort of thing, it repulses me, but it was Jeeqbit who informed me it makes the fight trivial, hence my use of quotation marks.

I have no doubt that a call-out party is easier than pugging it, as you say. Again, to me the whole operation is simply pointless.

Honestly I don't get this kind of mentality. I am as bad at social as I can be, but even for me discord like that is fine. If you're joining big discord like the Balance, for example, ofc it tends to have drama. Heck, it's not even exclusive to raiders, as casual discord will do have drama as well.

You all took this too seriously. It's just callout discord for a freaking mmo games.

[Supersnow845]

People also are intentionally ignoring that the discords give you as much engagement as you are willing to get out of them. Back in SB I joined the fledgling BA discord on light and mutely silenced my mic enough times to get some elemental gear and my ozma mount then left

I moved back to aether in ShB and joined ABBA, I decided to try and be a bit more active on ABBA and started to learn how to call BA and host runs. By the time I finally “retired” from BA about midway through EW I had hosted hundreds of runs. Met many people who I still talk to today, had lots of people who would ping me when ABBA’s queues were full but nobody was hosting because I had a habit of always doing ad-HOC runs, was even the one who hosted the run mr happy streamed for his completion of BA.

And this was only because I decided to try to be more sociable when I joined ABBA. My experience in BA could have ended with just my mute runs on light in SB

[Khryseis_Astra]

OC hopes? A story mode for the current Tower and its mirror in the next zone, along the lines of CLL/Dalriada/Del Reg Normal from Bozja. One cipher paid at the reliquary gets you in, first come, first serve. Rez restrictions removed, difficulty set to story mode. Current Tower becomes Savage mode, with full PF support. Probably not going to happen, but that would be the ideal for me.

Cosmic? I don’t really have many complaints, except I think GP should be reset after completing the gathering missions, so you don’t have to wait for it to build back up to start the next. Much as I’d like to see the next planet(s) have a more Diadem-like gathering loop, that also probably isn’t going to happen. I do hope they add some “exploration” to the next zones though… it’s in the name and all!

[Deedlit]

Sub numbers being way down. Not that they'd tell you.

[CapaxInfiniti]

Honestly? What could you possibly expect?
The game is circling the drain, but they are in no way going to say that. No one would. There's not a single company out there that would even hint that there's a problem and the playerbase is in freefall.

Hopefully they announce that the rest of Dawntrails patches are cancelled so they can release the next expansion to try to fix this disaster sooner rather than later.

[Hallarem]

Honestly? What could you possibly expect?
The game is circling the drain, but they are in no way going to say that. No one would. There's not a single company out there that would even hint that there's a problem and the playerbase is in freefall.

Hopefully they announce that the rest of Dawntrails patches are cancelled so they can release the next expansion to try to fix this disaster sooner rather than later.

Compund that with the Japanese culture of trying not to "lose face" and we got a perfect soup of non-transparent design heading our way. "Just trust us and keep your sub for your fc and personal houses going"

[Mawlzy]

Honestly I don't get this kind of mentality. I am as bad at social as I can be, but even for me discord like that is fine. If you're joining big discord like the Balance, for example, ofc it tends to have drama. Heck, it's not even exclusive to raiders, as casual discord will do have drama as well.

That comes as no surprise.

You have expressed rigid views on how the game should be played, and puzzlement that not everybody shares those views.

I'm glad you have found a form of engagement that works for you and that you enjoy the game. But one of the features of a good MMORPG is that it provides almost as many ways of engaging with it as there are players playing it.

FFXIV has met that threshold in the past. It no longer does.

[Valence]

I'm really glad you gave this description, Jeeqbit, because it will deter players from getting involved in this nonsense.

The majority of people who get online to play a game, have absolutely no interest in following instructions, then following directions. They already have a job that is far more rewarding than that.

Moreover, if this process makes the fight "trivial," what on earth is the point?

Apparently it's not the casuals at all that fear challenge, it's those that only engage in content that requires them to march up and down on the parade ground following the orders of a drill sergeant.

Yeah that's why I found my run of BA extremely underwhelming when I did it last expansion. The whole concept of the instance looked pretty interesting, but ultimately it's been figured out, and there is no individual responsibility beyond the few leaders and it's all about following instructions. You have nothing to do at your level in terms of agency. And even if you wanted to try something, you can't because discipline has to be tight since a single mistake can potentially wipe the instance or kill half the party (with limited raises).

All in all it always boils down to a single denominator in XIV modern design, which is body checks, or the step sibling called "someone steps on the wrong spot everybody wipes and you have little to no control over it". That's the only way the devs are able to make this type of pve challenging, because otherwise people can just raise each other ad nauseam like in all casual modes. You can for example see this in contrast between the Mhach/Ivalice raids, notably with Ozma or TG Cid (both got nerfed for this reason) where mistakes could snowball into a wipe (but those fights back then still had the decency to offer margin for recovery and skill expression for supports), vs Nier raids that came after, with possibly a lot more individual casualties than any other raid, but where wiping was quite unusual, because there is no body check whatsoever, or no snowballing mechanic.

What I did like in the old pve model is that it was less about binary body checks or "gotcha into raid wipe", and more about snowballing death effects that people had to get under control and potentially save under specific margins, which Mhach and Ivalice back then did very well (in combination with the old battle system). BA and consorts on the other hand, try to insert walls that are more tied to flawless execution, something that's been more and more central to any extreme/savage+ fight and culminates in ultimates.